THE LONG VIEW

It began not with a shot, but with a formation—three ships steaming in unison through the Philippine Sea, their wakes stitching together an unspoken treaty. This 2026 maritime drill is not an isolated event, but a stanza in a decades-long poem of alliance. Look back to 1954, when the U.S. and Japan launched their first joint naval exercises after the Occupation—a fragile dance of trust between former enemies turned partners. That rhythm spread: ANZUS in 1951, SEATO in 1954, RIMPAC in 1971. Each exercise was a rehearsal, yes, but more importantly, a declaration: we stand together. Fast-forward to 1983, when U.S. Navy warships conducted FONOPs near Libya’s ‘Line of Death’—not to provoke war, but to uphold a principle. The same logic drives the Dewey and the BRP Antonio Luna today. Even the language matches: ‘freedom of navigation,’ ‘rules-based order,’ ‘interoperability’—the liturgy of liberal maritime security. In 2016, after the PCA ruling invalidated China’s nine-dash line, the U.S. sailed the Lassen and the Curtis Wilbur through the Spratlys—quietly, legally, defiantly. Now, in 2026, Japan joins, a signal that the coalition is widening. This is history’s echo: when one power seeks to redraw the map, others respond not with maps of their own, but with ships, schedules, and shared routines. The real weapon isn’t the missile—it’s the schedule of exercises, repeated month after month, year after year, until the message becomes undeniable. As Admiral Nimitz knew in 1945, and as Commodore Huljack knows now, peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of order—enforced not by declarations, but by deeds done together [9][10]. —Marcus Ashworth